Keyword Discussion Forum

I've had a Wordtracker subscription for many years now but with so many other free tools online, including Wordtracker's own free tool [freekeywords.wordtracker.com], is there any need to have a Wordtracker subscription anymore?

I never liked the company's attitude to service. That was ever since there was a problem, I couldn't use my account for over a week, and after several emails back and forth - and me demanding some compensation - they offered me a free extension of my subscription. Imagine my surprise when the extension turned out to be all of 48 hours! Yes, I'm UK based and am used to the rubbish service standards the UK expects compared with what others in the US are used to. But I seem to have no end of trouble with their service with search being painfully slow (for which they lay the blame elsewhere). If you use Wordtracker regularly you must surely have run into the same problems.

However, there are times when I want to do some intense research and save large lists of keywords and also get statistics on the number of pages (i.e. competition) and evaluate KEI. That is when I use my subscription.

Also, do you find that you often can't do those simple tasks because WT is painfully slows or just times out?

They say, "Please bear in mind that the Overture search tool has become increasingly unreliable since mid 2006. This may be due to the new Panama system. We are investigating."

1. If it's "increasingly unreliable" then do we trust in its availability less and less? Or in its results?

2. They've been "investigating" since mid 2006. If it's taken over a year it sounds like a stalling tactic. At what point do we as customers throw the towel in and say that they've had enough time to "investigate" (especially when there are good other tools around)?

Note to mod: I'm not leading up to "disclosing" a fantastic competitor product ;)

I've tried most of the free tools, but I pretty much stick to Google and Wordtracker for my keyword stats. I wish Google gave more than just a 1-5 ranking, though.

I stopped using Overture's keyword suggestion tool a few years ago, though I will sometimes check it when I see conflicting results between Google and Wordtracker. I also use Digital Point's tool now and then, which shows Wordtracker and Overture side-by-side.

KEI is certainly easy enough to calculate, as long as you have a tool that can gather the stats for you.

To evaluate competition, I use two metrics: 1) Number of pages matching the "exact" phrase (as in the KEI formula) [google.com...] 2) Number of pages with the phrase in the title. For example: [google.com...]

My keyword software, I originally purchased for a flat rate with a promise of lifetime upgrades. ( about 4 years old) The recent release require taking out a subscription to remain a "valid user". I continue to use an earlier version..guess what? its still gives me what I need..dont know why they have allowed the earlier version to work, but Im not going to complain...I just think subscribing to a keyword software or something like that is a bit over the top.

In my opinion, the value of WordTracker lies in its "lateral" search function (and, to a much lesser degree, its "thesaurus" function). Although it's taken some work, I've generated large lists of keywords that simply wouldn't be possible without the lateral search function.